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Vladlen Tatarsky represented a radical wing of bloggers and pro-invasion activists who supported Moscow’s war and also criticized what they saw as flaws in the Russian military.
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By Ivan Nechepurenko and Anatoly Kurmanaev
An influential Russian military blogger who has called for an escalation of the war in Ukraine was killed Sunday when a bomb exploded at a café in St. Petersburg, Russia, in what appeared to be one of the most high-profile attacks on a sympathizer. . of the invasion of Moscow.
Blogger Maksim Fomin, better known as Vladlen Tatarsky, was giving a public lecture in the center of Russia’s second-largest city when the explosion occurred at Street Food Bar No. 1, Russia’s Interior Ministry and the investigating government said.
Videos posted on social media showed that Mr. Tatarsky received a small statue with his symbol on the level a while before the explosion. An independent local media outlet, Fontanka, quoted a witness as saying the blogger won the statue as a gift from a woman. who introduced herself as a sculptor named Nastya.
Another witness said Tatarsky asked the woman to bring him the statue, after saying he told her she might not take it internally for fear of bombing, according to Russian tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda. About a hundred more people had gathered at the café to pay attention. talk to him about his experience as an army blogger, Fontanka said.
At least 25 other people were wounded in the blast and 19 were hospitalized, according to the city’s governor, Aleksandr Beglov.
Tatarsky represented a radical wing of bloggers and pro-invasion activists who supported Moscow’s war but also criticized what they saw as the Russian military’s shortcomings. His death is the highest-profile attack on a prominent Russian war supporter since August when a car bomb killed Daria Dugina, the daughter of an ultranationalist Russian supporter of President Vladimir V. Putin.
U. S. intelligence officials have been involved in the U. S. U. S. officials later said they believed the attack was legal through parts of the Ukrainian government, which denied any involvement.
Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, warned that the attack is a sign of internal fractures in Russian society, in line with Kiev’s own description of acts of sabotage in Russia since the war began.
Podolyak wrote on Twitter: “Spiders eat in a jar. The question of when domestic terrorism would become a tool of the internal political struggle was only a matter of time. “
Russian officials pointed the finger at the Kiev government, without directly accusing Ukraine of killing the blogger. Russia’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement that Tatarsky’s paintings had “provoked hatred” toward the Ukrainian government.
Sergei Neverov, deputy speaker of the Russian parliament, said: “It is transparent for everyone. “
He wrote on the messaging app Telegram that the attack was an attempt to terrorize Russian society, adding that it destroyed any chance of a peace deal.
“We have only noticed one more evidence that there is no one to communicate with in Kiev,” Mr. Neverov said. “They won’t be their targets. We will not be afraid. “
Some of Tatarsky’s comrades called for an escalation of anti-Ukraine movements to avenge the attack.
“Are we going to wait for GUR to dedicate a terrorist attack on the Kremlin?” wrote another army blogger who publishes under the so-called Notes of Veteran, the acronym for Ukrainian army intelligence. “Only then will there be movements opposed to the decision-to make centers in Kiev. “
Originally from Ukraine, Tatarsky, 40, received Russian citizenship in 2021. Among his survivors is his wife, Ksenia. Local media said he also had a son from a first marriage.
Tatarsky sided with Russian proxy forces when they occupied the city of Donetsk in 2014. Since the large-scale invasion of Russia, he advocated waging an all-out war against Ukraine and its other peoples and called for the elimination of the Ukrainian state. He also denounced Russian activists and cultural figures who opposed the war.
He had posted pro-war news, reviews and propaganda for his 560,000 followers on Telegram. He is also a regular commentator on Russian state television.
Last November, when a Russian commander announced that Moscow’s troops would be withdrawn from the strategically vital city of Kherson in Ukraine, Mr. Tatarsky was among the bloggers and commentators on Russia’s warmongering army who responded with desperation, anguish and denial.
Tatarsky reacted to the news by saying in an article that Russia’s overall war plan is “idiotic” and “based on disinformation. “
He is also one of the vital voices of an ultra-nationalist faction in the country.
“We need to kill dressed in the uniform of the enemy army,” he wrote in a Telegram post in January, after the Russian government proposed a brief ceasefire.
In recent months, he seems to have become increasingly pessimistic about Russia’s war prospects, saying only a primary overhaul can ensure victory.
He criticized the commanders of the Russian army and pointed to that of the Russian army. In a recent video, he hinted that nothing would replace if you “replaced the defense minister or the leader of the general staff. “
“We want to replace the system,” he said.
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